The table below gives the current car tax bands for 2011/2012 for cars registered after March 2001. The bands are based on the cars average CO2 emissions.  You can see that cars in bands A-D benefit from a lower tax rate in their first year, whilst cars in bands H-M are penalised in the first year.

For cars registered before this date any cars with an engine size up to 1549cc are taxed at £130 and for engines above 1549cc they are taxed at £215